Regional market blocks will be eliminated due to AfCFTA agreement signed by member countries
Richmond K Frimpong, Executive Director of Financial Literacy Foundation
Richmond K Frimpong, Executive Director of Financial Literacy Foundation in Africa, has stated that the Africa Free Trade Continental Area (AfCFTA) agreement will make it easy for member countries to allow others into their country to trade.
Read full articleHe said the regional markets blocks among African countries will be eliminated soon since the AfCFTA is working to improve the continent's economy through its Agenda 2063.
“The benefit of the Continental Free Trade area is that now the agreement is going to bring an overriding effect over these regional market blocks so that Africa will be at the Centre of one single economic community then they are going to put together an African monetary union, remember these whole things are being sponsored and engineered and powered by AU and they are looking at the AU agenda 2063. So all African countries have put together a strategic paper that they want to see a certain Africa by 2063,” he said.
Speaking on JoyNews monitored by GhanaWeb, Mr. Frimpong explained that all African countries have signed an agreement on issues that will help develop the continent and its major aim is to see the continent use one currency and have a holistic customs union that will deal with transportation.
“The challenges we have with currency changes and things like so that we don’t have to struggle with if I buy something in Ghana and I have to pay I don’t have to change it to any other country’s currency it can be used like that and then the customs union. So we will have the African customs union dealing with transportation, dealing with trade barriers and the economic community dealing with the regional blocks in terms of the economic community association and then we will have the monetary union, so at the Centre of all these will be the Pan-African trade path which is the AfCFTA and that takes away the majority of the challenges that businesses are going to experience”. He explained.
He further stated that small scale businesses are going to be the major beneficiaries of this because access to other countries to expand their businesses will be made possible through the agreement.
Meanwhile, Agenda 2063 is a sustainable development policy being drafted by the African Union that will structure the development of the continent into various phases and it is expected to be achieved by 2063.
